


stone by stone; a wall, a road

by pressforward



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: After Kirkwall, Gen, I only want Merrill and Fenris to eventually become uncomfortably friendly acquaintances, Post-Canon, it WOULD take a city blowing up wouldn't it, this is just an excuse to get Merrill and Fenris to uncomfortably talk to each other, this is just an excuse to give Fenris a flower crown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-09 22:16:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20517299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pressforward/pseuds/pressforward
Summary: Merrill loots a cart to get the eluvian out of Kirkwall, then gets in a giant fight with Fenris.As seen in the "After Kirkwall" zine





	stone by stone; a wall, a road

It is nearly full night as they each separate, moving purposefully down the city streets to their homes, to dig through the memories collected through the years, decide which can be carried and which should be left to be looted or burned. It is nearly full night, and the cobbled streets still show clear to human eyes, because half the city is on fire. Somehow only half the city, burning like Andraste’s execution pyre.

Each of them is discreet for once, whether from exhaustion or a long-dormant sense of self-preservation. No need for anyone to be a martyr tonight.

When they arrive at the gates from the city, Merrill is there waiting with a cart, a donkey, and a simple explanation.

“I looted it,” she says, fingers idly stroking a wrapped package in the back, long and thin and flat.

“Oh boy,” Varric mutters under his breath, soot-smeared and looking, for once, at the end of his patience.

“Oh, _Kitten,”_ Isabela says, then pulls her close to rest a cheek against her hair. She wraps the other arm about Merrill’s shoulders, and turns a plaintive look towards Hawke. “Tell me we’re keeping her.”

Merrill pays this no mind, though she does wriggle one shoulder upwards, wincing. Her gaze never leaves the cart. “We’re fugitives again, right? We have to make do.”

At this, Aveline heaves a sigh, then turns to glance behind her, back to the streets and the flames and the smoke. Varric forces a grin, then nods to the cart. “Great!” he says, though his voice is strained. “I hate walking.”

When Hawke starts forward, they follow, and the cart rattles and creaks along with them. The donkey that plods along before it is thin and ill-used, and Merrill pats it absently as she walks, does not speak to it as she might have before.

They make it past the walls without incident, just another ragtag collection of former civilians, Isabela to the front keeping up a low murmur with Hawke and Bethany, Fenris behind them. Varric is keeping pace with the donkey and the cart, occasionally casting Merrill a sidelong glance that she does not return. Aveline and Anders bring up the rear, silent.

When the cart wheels rattle at another rut in the road, Fenris glowers over his shoulder and says, “You should have just left it behind.”

Merrill does not even look at him, hand settling flat over her eluvian. “I could never. It’s the hope for my people.”

“Well,” Varric says with the tone he uses for his Carta acquaintances, his house steward, his editor, “It’s done now, so let’s just--”

“Your _people_ didn’t even want this from you,” Fenris snarls, turning fully back in the road. Ahead, Hawke and Isabela have stopped.

“They’re your people, too,” Merrill says wearily, mouth pinching flat. She holds her ground as Fenris stalks towards her, stopping just out of reach.

Varric clears his throat, tries again, “Come on, now--”

“They have nothing to do with me, and they have the good sense to want nothing to do with _you!”_

The end of her patience comes with a bowstring’s snap, and her chin lifts, shoulders rounded as she cries, “Elgar’nan! You know, sometimes I think Anders was right about you! Half mistreated child and half wild dog!”

He recoils from her, then remembers himself and shifts his weight forward again to hiss, “Even a dog has more sense than to meddle in blood sorcery! You cursed yourself and doomed your clan!”

“I’d like to see the dog that’s done _half_ of what I have!” she shouts back at him, feet planted and fists clenched. “I’d like to see you try! You’ve never believed in anything besides your own pain, not for a second!”

“Both of you--” Aveline says, as Isabela starts back, saying, “Have off, will you--”

Neither listen. “You haven’t the _slightest_ idea of my pain! When have you done anything but turn your back on your betters?”

“They are _not_ my ‘betters’!”

“They knew better than _you!”_

_“Enough!”_ Hawke snarls, cutting between them. She is glaring both of them down, bow still slung over her shoulder, hands up and ready to separate them. “You are _not_ going to try tearing each other apart now, and if you are, you’ll have to go through _me.”_

Merrill has her chin up, eyes blazing, and for a moment it seems she will actually take Hawke up on her offer. Then she inhales deep through her teeth and drops her shoulders, looks aside.

“Fenris,” Hawke says, short and sharp, and he bristles, but steps back. The lyrium dims along his hands, and Varric softly lets out a breath, Aveline relaxing.

They nearly turn and proceed forward again when Anders remarks from the back, voice hoarse but with something approaching normalcy, “You know, I honestly thought it’d be me.”

Fenris wheels, hand going to his sword, and Merrill does the same, jaw clenched.

“Hawke, can we separate the children please?” Isabela calls, carrying and clear, and Hawke’s shoulders straighten at it, her mouth settling, exhaustion pushed aside. The Champion again, if only for a moment.

“Anders, with me. Fenris, keep watch with Aveline in the rear.” She hesitates a moment, then says, “Merrill, carry Varric when he gets tired.”

Varric gives a half-hearted scoff, and none of them manage a smile. Merrill stays where she is, still breathing hard, eyes fixed on the ground. Anders goes up to Hawke in the front, trading identical venomous looks with Fenris as they pass each other. 

Fenris takes his place by Aveline, who looks him over and only says, “Do you have everything you need?”

“Yes,” he says, and they leave it at that, resume walking. It is necessity, only necessity, that makes them look back.

\---

One day passes, and then the next, and the situation has not improved. Small disagreements and hurts flare to sharp arguments, if not with Anders, then with Aveline, or Varric, or Hawke herself, and once, horribly, Bethany. Merrill keeps her peace, but bites her nails to the quick. More often than not, Isabela casts long speculative looks towards the horizon.

Fenris excuses himself from camp as one evening approaches and goes to sit alone just past the treeline. Foolhardy, and possibly dangerous, but better than the alternative of staying any longer by the fire in fraught silence. From here, Kirkwall is… nothing. Gone as though it had never been. He sits very still and watches the roads intently, as though he can see the doings of his life once again streaming past him.

There is a soft step behind him, easy to recognize, and he scowls. Only one person also walks barefoot down the paths.

“What,” he says, voice flat.

A moment, then Merrill says quietly, “I’m here to apologize.”

“Not accepted. Go away.”

“I--” She stops herself before she stammers, takes a deep breath. “No,” she says, and plops down on the ground. “I won’t. I said some awful things before, and I didn’t mean them.”

“You wouldn’t have said them if you weren’t thinking them,” he retorts. He could leave. But he shouldn’t have to, and he suspects she might only follow.

She sighs, small and miserable, hugs her knees to her chest. “I know.”

“So what are you here to apologize for?” he says, each word bitter. “My _plight?_ The unfortunate conditions of my existence?”

“I’m here to apologize for me,” she says. “Just me. Just… the things I said to you. I’m sorry, Fenris. Really, I am. Very sorry.”

“Not sorry enough,” he says, and turns his back on her.

She doesn’t leave, just continues softly, “You’re your own man. Or elf, really. I shouldn’t have said-- I mean. You’re responsible for what you do, and I’m sorry I took that away, even a little.”

“Aveline said the same thing to me once,” he says, unimpressed. “About responsibility.”

“Oh! She really is smarter than she seems, you know, but not by much.”

“Smart enough not to make deals with demons, at least,” he says acidly. “No one else has to make sacrifices for Aveline.”

Merrill flinches, but does not immediately respond. Almost, he looks back in surprise--it should have driven her away--but then she says, “I never asked Marethari to do what she did,” tone firm though her voice shakes. “That was her doing, and not mine. She could have believed me.”

“You deliberately disobeyed her,” he snaps, twisting around to glower at her. “Why suffer a blood mage to live, let alone run unfettered across the countryside? Do you think you’re an exception? Is there something about you that is somehow above the rules?”

“I don’t _dis_agree with the rules,” she says, and he snorts, turning away again. “It’s only… they don’t really exist, you know. We made them, and we can make others.”

“We made many of them for good reasons.”

“Reasons change,” she says, inching back into view. “Just look at us, all still together. We didn’t used to be like this, remember?”

“Yes,” he says heavily, nearly getting up, but his shoulders and knees still ache, and he is not ready to go back to camp yet. “I used to be much happier.”

“Were you?”

He hesitates, hands flat to the ground. He owes her nothing. But she is there, and waiting, and this at least is an answer he knows. So he says, “Life was much simpler when I did not know Hawke.”

“Oh,” she says, “I agree.”

They sit, for once, in silent accord. Then she says into the quiet, “But not as fun.”

He makes a noise, somewhere between a laugh and a groan, then shuts his mouth. Merrill laughs, for the first time in days, and he glares at her. “This changes nothing between us.”

“But it might,” she says, smiling. 

When he does not reply, she adds, with a firm and finite gentleness, “We’re Hawke’s _family._ Things are always going to be changing between us. If they hadn’t, you’d have turned me over to the templars years ago. Maybe even ripped my heart out yourself? I think I could have stopped you, though. Probably.”

Fenris only scoffs. “Why do you think I never tried?”

At that, she leans forward, beaming at him. “So you _do_ think I would be a challenge! You know, I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve said about me yet.”

“I’m not _blind,_ witch.”

She straightens, her smile gone. “And I’m not stupid. Can’t we just make this right between us?”

“What would be the point?” he says wearily. “We’re separating, all of us. You see it too. Varric and Aveline will never leave Kirkwall, not for long. _Anders,”_ he spits the name, “will be gone, and good riddance. Isabela will go off to sea and bring Hawke with her.”

“And you?”

“I don’t see how it’s any of your business.”

She considers, then says softly, “I think I’ll go back to Kirkwall. There’s so much more to do. They need so much.”

“Good for you. Try not to consort with any demons this time around.”

“You could come back too,” Merrill says, looking at him oddly. “Maybe I’m not a part of your people, but I think they are.”

“You know _nothing_ of me,” he snaps, pulling away.

She shrugs, stares off over the hills as though she can still see the smoke rising in the distance. Fenris looks as well, hands settled loose before him. Seven long years in Kirkwall, now lost to rubble and ash and bad memories.

When he pulls his gaze back, Merrill is leaning to the side, pulling up grass; her narrow shoulders twitch with the movement. He disregards her. It doesn’t matter what she’s doing.

She continues regardless. “It’s okay to care about people,” she says quietly, voice distant and misdirected, as though to her hands. “Even if it hurts sometimes.”

“I don’t need any advice from _you.”_

“Maybe not. But you’d be surprised what you can learn from people, if you only listen.” She smiles briefly over her shoulder. “You’ve all taught me so much already.”

“Clearly not enough,” he says, thrusting a bare hand towards her, branded lines still clear after all these years. _“Someone_ should learn something from these, and it shouldn’t just be me.”

She freezes, eyes huge and stricken. “I’m so sorry, Fenris--”

_“Don’t,”_ he says harshly. “Don’t you dare. I don’t need any pity from _you.”_

She considers his hand for a moment, then turns away to keep picking at the ground. “Well then. I’m sorry. For everything I’ve done or said.”

“As you will,” he says, pulling his hand back. “I hope you’re not expecting the same.”

She laughs at him, reaches further to pluck at another bunch of grass and settle it in her lap. “Of course not! What should I do next, wait for the Dread Wolf himself to come lunging out of the sky and doom us all? I know you.”

He is very still, and his mouth goes pinched. He looks at his hands, gone tight before him.

“But it’s all right,” she says, still fiddling with something, then brushing grass from her leggings. “I forgive you. Just you.”

“I never asked you to.”

“That’s fine.”

“Frankly, the implication I would even ask is offensive to me.”

“Mm,” she says, then, “Look here a moment.”

He looks, and she has her hands outstretched towards him, a circlet of daisies looped around them, further decorated with clover and elfroot. He could stop her, as she shifts towards him.

But he doesn’t.

She settles it on his hair, inspecting the effect gravely then making a minute adjustment without touching him even once. He holds himself still, waiting. It will only take the smallest excuse for him to tear it off and fling it away, but she remains silent and careful.

After it is settled, she only surveys him a moment longer, then gives a tiny nod and lowers her hands before standing and brushing herself off. Tiny leaves and bits of grass still cling to her hands and clothes when she is done. He makes no mention of them.

“Take care of yourself, Fenris,” she says, and turns to walk back to camp.

“You’re a danger to yourself and others,” he calls after her.

“It’s sweet of you to be thinking of me,” she calls back, waving before she disappears among the trees.

Fenris stays where he is, waits until the sun has set before standing and walking back to camp. Anders is absent, and so Fenris steps forward to find a place around the fire.

“Nice hat,” Varric says, smile reaching his eyes for the first time since Kirkwall. Bethany laughs outright, and jostles Hawke’s arm to make her look.

Fenris hands the flowers to Hawke when she makes mock, then settles beside her as she preens exaggeratedly by the firelight. Merrill claps her hands from where she is seated in Isabela’s lap, and Aveline leans to rescue a fallen daisy. When Varric says something to her, she makes a face, shaking her head before handing it to Bethany, who smiles and leans against Hawke.

Fenris considers them a moment, then stands again to lift the flowers from Hawke’s head and award them to Bethany instead as Hawke hisses at him. “You’ve done nothing to deserve it,” he tells her, then sidesteps as she swats at his knees.

“You made the right choice,” Bethany tells him gravely as Merrill laughs into her hands.

“It’s hardly fair!” Hawke says, then shoves him as he goes to sit again. “After I got you that nice sword. You love that sword.”

“Ah yes,” Fenris says, dusting off his knees before going to sit by Aveline instead. “A remnant of a homeland where I lived in servitude. I shall treasure it always.”

Isabela laughs. “Hawke, remember when you got me that ship-in-a-bottle? I couldn’t tell if you were being kind or mocking me!”

“Well, I don’t see the problem,” Hawke retorts. “You missed your ship, I got you a ship.” She attempts a sultry tone. “‘Oh Hawke, how thoughtful of you.’ ‘Anything for you, my beautiful dashing captain.’ You may kiss me now.”

Isabela only makes a face at her across the fire. “You think that’s my voice?”

“Of course it’s your voice.”

“It’s a very nice voice,” Merrill says helpfully, and Varric chuckles, lines about his eyes easing.

“Why thank you, Merrill,” Hawke says, managing a flourish as she bows from the waist despite a protest from Bethany, casts a sidelong glance at Isabela as she rises. “See? Merrill likes my you-voice.”

“It is certainly a voice,” Fenris says, and she sneers at him.

“It’s just so plain,” Isabela laments, propping a cheek on one hand. “It needs a little more sex appeal. A little more _purr.”_

“She’s a Hawke, not a cat,” Merrill says. “Though she’d be a lovely cat, if she were.”

“You’re the only cat for me, Kitten,” Isabela says fondly.

Hawke gasps. “I beg to differ.”

“Sweetness, there’s a difference between a cat and a pus--”

“Ah!” Bethany says, lifting her hands to her ears. “No no no no! I can’t hear you!”

“Okay!” says Varric at the same time, very loudly. “So who wants to hear about the time Hawke fell into the harbor going after a piece of trash?”

_“Please,”_ Aveline says, and Fenris laughs. He pretends not to see Merrill glancing towards him, not with a question, but a calm, careful certainty. She knows. They all know, faces wan despite their supposed merriment. They will be leaving soon, each of them. The sheer weight of what was set in motion will pull them apart.

They could walk away now, each of them, at any moment. It would be easy. Nearly, Fenris comes to his feet, takes up his pack and sword, and does. Then Merrill looks aside at something Hawke says, and the moment is over.

They stay settled by the fire, for just a little longer.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to [Laugan](https://laugan-art.tumblr.com) for putting this zine together! <3
> 
> See other works in the zine [here](https://afterkirkwall.tumblr.com)


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